


Family Now

by 1electricpirate



Series: Applications and Practices of Basic Arithmetic [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Parentlock, Snippets, epilogue of an epilogue, mystrade, the things i find in the dusty recesses of my google drive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9381167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1electricpirate/pseuds/1electricpirate
Summary: “You really shouldn’t be living alone until your leg is completely healed,” John says later, sipping his tea, after they’ve gotten through the obligatory small talk. “Why don’t you come stay with us for a while? Sherlock and I can sleep up with the twins, we’ve got a futon up there, you can stay in our room.”“I’d rather take another bullet,” Greg replies.After the events of Multiply, John goes to visit a recovering Greg.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting fully formed in my GDrive since 2013. I just unearthed it and figured, why not post it? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Greg Lestrade lives in a small flat in central London that has seen many a better day. His wife left him just enough money for the down-payment and since then, he’s been saving all of his salary that wasn’t going on alimony for the eventual day when Sherlock Holmes caused his entire world to come crashing down around his ears. Of course, that day had come sooner rather than later, so in the small flat he stayed. He’d been reinstated quite quickly after the scandal - no doubt through some finagling of Mycroft’s - but then he’d never quite worked past the guilt enough to move forwards and get the hell out of the little hole in the wall in which he spent a lot less time than technically he should.  
  
John knows all this, in theory, but it’s still humbling to see his friend hobbling around a dilapidated two room apartment that really has none of the comforts of home.   
  
“Greg, sit down and let me do it,” he offers, feeling a bit useless standing in the bedroom slash living room while Greg, fresh out of hospital from a bullet wound he got protecting _John’s_ family, limps around trying to get the tea on.  
  
“Sit down and shut up, Watson, I’m fine.”   
  
John does as he’s told; a few minutes later, Greg comes back and hands him a mug of tea. He has a limp, but it’s not too pronounced. The wound healed well and with a bit of rehabilitation, the leg should be back to normal; but John knows full well that it’s a long and painful process.   
  
“You really shouldn’t be living alone until your leg is completely healed,” John says later, sipping his tea, after they’ve gotten through the obligatory small talk. “Why don’t you come stay with us for a while? Sherlock and I can sleep up with the twins, we’ve got a futon up there, you can stay in our room.”   
  
“I’d rather take another bullet,” Greg replies, deadpan, though his eyes are twinkling. “I’m fine, John. It’s not so bad, and this place is small. The elevator broke the other day, though, that was rough.”   
  
John raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t push the matter.   
  
“How’s it going at Baker Street, anyway? Sherlock have the kids today?”  
  
“Mmm. He’s taken them to see his mother. I’d rather not deal with her unless absolutely necessary, and they’ll only spend the whole day shouting at each other in French, so I thought I’d come and see how you’re doing. When do you go back to the Yard?”  
  
“Therapist says another two weeks,” Greg says, frowning down at his thigh. “To be honest, I’ve had so much paperwork lately it probably wouldn’t hurt to go back now. They don’t want to give me any proper cases, not after - well, you know.”   
  
John nods, sighing. He does know. It’s a shame, as well, because quite aside from what he was able to accomplish with Sherlock’s help, Greg Lestrade is one of the best detectives Scotland Yard has at its disposal, and they’re wary of letting him do his job because of the mistakes made by his underlings.   
  
“And you didn’t answer my question. How’s it going? You know, with Sherlock and the kids.”  
  
John smiles slightly, swirling the last half of his tea around in his mug. “It’s … different. At Eastwell I was surrounded with people that knew what they were doing. Now it’s all down to us, and neither of us have a bloody clue what we’re doing.”  
  
“How’s Sherlock dealing with it?”  
  
“Surprisingly well,” John says, frowning at his own phrasing. “He’s … different, somehow. He hasn’t even said the word ‘bored’ in two weeks. I think he’s still scared he’ll break them, but he’s getting better, and they adore him already because he spoils them rotten. He had them walking within two days of us getting home, you know. Well, they were getting there anyway but. It was brilliant to see.”  
  
John grins at the memory of Teddy’s first wobbling steps from Sherlock’s surprisingly (that word again! It’s bad, isn’t it, that that’s the only adjective he can think of to apply to Sherlock’s parenting skills?) patient arms towards John, sitting on the floor watching him anxiously, and the look of unabashed pride and adoration on Sherlock’s face when he’d made it all the way there without falling.  
  
“That’s … that’s really good,” Greg says, grinning back at him. “I’ll come visit and see them sometime.”  
  
“You should,” John agrees. “Sherlock would like it too.”  
  
“You think? He hasn’t exactly been dying to see me.”  
  
Well, that’s true. Sherlock had gone to the hospital with John the day after Greg had been shot, but he’d been sullen and silent the whole time, and not just because of Mycroft’s prolonged and noticeable presence in the room. “He’s embarrassed,” John says. “Or, I think he is. He feels he owes you a debt he can never repay. I’ve killed people to keep him safe but you got _hurt_ , and he doesn’t know what to do about it. That’s what I think, anyway.”  
  
“He’s an idiot,” Greg says, with feeling. “I could have been shot any given day of my entire career, there wasn’t anything particularly special about what happened that night, just that it did. It’s my job to be shot at. It only matters if it kills me.”  
  
“That’s not true and you know it,” John argues, glaring at his friend across the small space of the living room. “You didn’t have to be there, you didn’t have to help, it wasn’t your _job_ , it was something you did because you’re our friend and you were helping us. He doesn’t know how to have friends, and it’s going to take him a while to sort it out in his head. Until then he’s going to be distant and rude and caustic. He doesn’t mean it, he just has to figure out what it means to care about someone that isn’t, you know, me or the children. After he figures it out … well, we’ll see, I guess.”  
  
Greg sighs, his shoulders slumping a bit. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re a brave man, John Watson, to take on Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know how you haven’t shot him yourself.”  
  
“It’s tempting, sometimes, but then I think about how tedious it is to get blood out of the carpet.” They laugh together, but then John sobers up a bit and fixes Greg with his patented Serious Face, the one that he only really uses on Sherlock these days.   
  
“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to tell me, only I want to know in case I have to run interference with Himself later.”  
  
Greg groans and covers his face, no doubt expecting what’s coming before John says it.  
  
“What’s... going on, with you and Mycroft?” John asks, despite the obvious discomfort the question causes his friend (and himself).  
  
“Hasn’t Sherlock worked it out?” Greg counters, mumbling through his fingers.  
  
“Well if he has he refuses to talk about it, and he gets so idiotic about anything to do with his brother - and to be honest, Mycroft’s not exactly on my good books either, so I just … want to know.”  
  
“I don’t know myself,” Greg admits, peering through his fingers. “You remember, that night when you found Sherlock’s note and drank all the whiskey in London? Well, I called Mycroft that night from your cellphone and he came to pick you up – and since then, he’s just been … around. He’s terrifying, but … well, I don’t know, to be honest.”  
  
“Christ,” John says, emphatically, before colouring slightly and tripping over himself to apologize for his reaction. “Are you … I mean are you shagging him or what? What are we dealing with here?”  
  
“No!” Greg exclaims, but then he colours a bit and slouches again. “I mean. No. It’s … he’s impossible to read and I don’t really, you know, bat for that team but. Well. He’s been here a lot, lately. He just … shows up and lets himself in and doesn’t even say anything, just sits and works while I do, well, whatever it is I’m doing, watching TV or reading or physio exercises, and then he orders food and sometimes we chat and sometimes … not. It’s … fine. It’s nice. To have someone around.”   
  
“Christ,” John says again. “I mean, I’m not one to talk, my relationship isn’t a shining beacon of normality …”   
  
“Yeah, let’s remember you _married_ Sherlock Holmes of your own free will. You’ve not a leg to stand on, Watson.”  
  
John grins and rolls his eyes at his friend, who smirks back at him. “Right,” John says, then, shaking the moment away. “Right. So that’s … happening. Let me know when you finally snap and shag him, I might need the emotional blackmail material. No details, mind, I think my brain might short circuit.”  
  
“As long as you promise never to tell me what you and Sherlock get up to behind closed doors, I promise never to go into detail about his brother. Deal?”  
  
“Deal,” John says, wincing slightly at the very thought, but reaching across the room to shake Greg’s proffered hand.   
  
“Christ, we’re a pair,” Greg says, sighing and leaning back against the wall, gingerly swinging his leg up in front of him. “I can’t wait to get back to work, I’m telling you. I guess I’m not dealing with two toddlers, but I’m itching for something to do. Bored is the least of it.”  
  
“That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, actually.” John leans over and pushes the footrest properly into position so Greg’s leg isn’t at a funny angle. “Not for now, mind, but in the future. I was thinking, about Sherlock. I don’t think he’ll last if he doesn’t have something to distract him. I’m not overly keen on the idea of him getting back into it, but the work gives him something to do, and it’s not healthy for either of us to only exist for the kids.”  
  
“You want me to instate him as an official member of the team,” Greg muses, preempting John’s next point.   
  
“Well …  yes. Not now, just, eventually,” John hastens to add. “He’s not … he needs some time to stabilise, and we need some time to find our feet. And I know you can’t keep him on as you did before. I just want to know if it’s possible to make him somehow official – what would we need to do?”   
  
“I’ll have a think about it. God knows we could use him. Those monkeys in forensics never get any better.”  
  
John winces at the memory of Greg’s forensics team. “You really don’t have the cream of the crop.”  
  
“Well, and Sherlock makes even the most brilliant of them look like doddering fools without hardly lifting his pinkie finger. I’ll see what we can do.”   
  
“Thanks,” John says, biting his lip. “It’ll take a while, for us to figure out how we’re going to get by, but it’d be good to have something of the status quo back. It’s a bit unsettling, being back in the same place but with everything completely different.”  
  
“I know how that is,” Greg agrees. He places his empty mug on the floor. “I’ll have a word with Mycroft, too, see if he can’t pull any strings with the higher ups.”  
  
“That’d work. Mycroft will do just about anything for Sherlock - well, and you, I think,” John muses. “He’ll pull it off somehow.”  
  
“He’d do anything for you and the twins too, John,” Greg corrects, solemnly. “He doesn’t advertise it but his family means everything to him.”  
  
“Guess that makes you family too, then, eh?” John teases, but Greg doesn’t take the bait, just sits there watching John with a wan smile on his face.   
  
“We’ve been family for a while, I think,” he says, finally. John colours a bit, looking down at his empty mug, but when he thinks about it, it’s probably true. Sherlock didn’t do what he did for John alone - he did it for Greg and Mrs. Hudson as well. When John hit rock bottom and then kept falling, Greg was there to pick up the pieces where even his sister hadn’t been willing to help. Greg had listened to him explaining the reasons behind his and Mycroft’s plan to have Sherlock’s child and instead of calling him crazy or being disgusted at the very idea, as most other people he’d told had been, he had simply squeezed John’s wrist and said it sounded like exactly what he needed, and if he ever needed help with the kid, he knew where to call. John looks up from his mug to study the man across from him, a friend that he’d found when he wasn’t even looking, and nods slowly.  
  
“I guess we have been.”  
  
“We’re all just as fucked up as each other, but we’ve pulled each other through this shitstorm of a time,” Greg says, spreading his arms wide. “Why not call it what it is, a family of fuckups and misfits?”   
  
“Fair enough,” John agrees. “Though I think you’ll find that the Holmeses deal with family emergencies in ways that are quite often detrimental to your mental health.”  
  
“Well, I knew that already.”   
  
John grins at him and then checks his watch. “Oh, shit. I’ve got to run, mate, I promised Harry I’d stop by and see her, haven’t even talked to her in months.”  
  
“Thanks for stopping over, John, it was good to see you.”  
  
“You too. No, sit, I’ll show myself out,” John says, shooing Greg back into his seat. “Glad you’re still in one piece. The leg’s looking good too. Come visit sometime, Sherlock’s desperate to show off the twins walking to anyone he can. Had the contractors from next door over to see them, he’s that proud.”  
  
“I will,” Greg chuckles, waving John away. “Now get out. I give it five minutes before Mycroft shows up with my dinner and I’m starving.”  
  
With a teasing grimace, John waves back at him and lets himself out of the apartment. Sure enough, as he walks down the street towards the tube station, a familiar black sedan whizzes past him to come to a halt in front of the door to Greg’s apartment building.  
  
Well, John thinks to himself, as he slides his Oyster card across the reader. That’s a new and slightly horrible development. He can’t wait to tease Sherlock about it mercilessly, just to watch him squirm.   
  
  



End file.
